Organ Donation Week is less than two weeks away and we are pleased to inform that the digital assets are now available to download from the Promoting Donation Hub. There are a variety of assets to download including social media posts, a screensaver, email signature, downloadable posters and web adverts. It would be great if you are able to support the campaign further by sharing posts on your social media pages, adding the signature to your email account and encouraging your Trusts/organisation to include the screensaver on company desktops.

The campaign will be asking people to get talking about organ donation. We will be encouraging families to think about what they would do if a family member needed an organ, and asking people who may never have considered donating their organs before to talk as a family to help them decide. We will be showcasing a variety of videos and stories throughout the week showing the extraordinary transformation organ donation can make, and the families who supported their relatives wish to donate. The video content will be available from Monday 4th September so please do check our social channels and the Promoting Donation Hub and share these videos during the campaign week.

Our main news release will focus on the hundreds of potential transplants that are missed each year when families say no to donation because they don’t know whether their relative wanted to donate. We’ll be issuing our press release on the Thursday beforehand, embargoed until Monday 4th. We’ve got an accompanying photo showing two case studies with hundreds of empty organ and tissue boxes, to illustrate the missed potential transplants. We’ll also be approaching media with specific case studies and with our video assets. We have a template press release aimed at partner supporters, which our press office can share. Our own local press releases will focus on the number of people in each area that have died waiting for a transplant in the past 10 years.

In addition to the graphics-based social media posts which you can download from the above link to the Promoting Donation Hub, here are core messages in straight text for use in tweets or Facebook posts.

• Your family won’t know how you feel about organ donation, unless you tell them. Tell them this Organ Donation Week #YesIDonate

• A few words now can make an extraordinary difference. Tell your family how you feel about organ donation this Organ Donation Week #YesIDonate

• If you’d accept a lifesaving organ, shouldn’t you be prepared to donate? #YesIDonate

We have created a trackable UTM link, for you to embed into posts on your social media pages, on newsletter and websites. This will allow us to evaluate how many people visit our website and take an action, such as joining the NHS Organ Donor Register. Please copy and paste the tracked link below:

We hope you have a good campaign week. Unfortunately we can no longer provide physical materials in time for the campaign week but digital materials will be available right up until the campaign and beyond.

Taking the organ and tissue donation message into the classroom

For schools in England

We have recently updated our free teaching resources to equip secondary school teachers in England with the tools to educate 11-16 year olds (key stage 3 and 4) about organ and tissue donation.

The lesson plans include student activity sheets with accompanying videos and real-life stories from different perspectives and experiences of organ and tissue donation, along with engaging classroom activities for pupils to work through together. We hope that these lessons will not only educate and prompt debate amongst students themselves, but also encourage students to go home and discuss this important subject with their families.

From September the teaching resources will be available to download from the Promoting Donation Hub. We have also produced a template letter which will be available to download from September for campaigners to send to schools in their area to encourage them to incorporate the teaching resources in their classrooms. Please help us to encourage schools to use these resources in their lesson planning by sending our template letter to schools in your local area.

Alternatively, if you have any ideas or contacts with schools to help promote the resources more widely if would be great if you could get in touch with us directly via marketing.comms@nhsbt.nhs.uk.

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